Snoozy
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Captain Jack Harkness' daughter Alice is trying to get on with her life, after losing her son. But there's something out there, or someone, that won't let her. Can this force be contained, and can it lead her to a reconciliation with her father?
1. Chapter 1

**This story came out of a nightmare I once had, much like my previous story, "Fear," and I found it rather therapeutic to write about.**

 **As you might know, I usually write for the Tenth Doctor, but as this story took shape, somehow, it was the Twelfth Doctor in my mind doing these things, saying these things, helping in the way he does. Plus, the timing fit, and anyway, I considered it "good measure" to write for the Twelfth Doctor. And as it turned out, I found it rather difficult to capture his voice. Let me know what you think.**

 **Alice Carter is a character that I don't know how many people think about. I know that I will never be able to watch "Children of Earth" the same way again, knowing what Alice must endure at the end. I can't even _think_ about it without a lump in my throat. Her plight goes hand-in-hand with my nightmares (every parent's nightmares really), and I wanted to explore what might have become of her after she leaves Jack behind, wordlessly promising never to speak to him again.**

 **And so, I give you this. I believe it will be in three parts. It's not my usual sort of thing, but I hope that elements of this first installment give you a little chill. Enjoy!**

* * *

BECOMING NO-ONE

I was thirty-three when I became Zoë Westhaven.

My birth name was Melissa Moretti. Walking about on this planet with my father's surname would have been exceptionally dangerous, and so, my mother gave me hers. Already I had my father's eyes - no need to push the envelope.

Still, one day, the danger caught up to me, and Melissa Moretti "died," and I went into deep cover.

And so, I was eighteen when I became Alice Sangster. The moniker was chosen for me by a government agency, the mention of whose name makes me want to curl up and die. I was now free to go off to university, and there, met a fellow student called Paul Carter.

I was twenty when I became Alice Carter. After the life I'd led, the mostly-absentee father I'd had, I was all too happy to settle down with a nice, seemingly stable man, and it didn't even matter that I wasn't going to finish my degree. My fondest hope was that my husband would be _there_. For me, and for any children we might have.

I was twenty-two when I became Mum. My son Steven was born just short of two years after our wedding, but by the time he arrived, Paul was already having an affair with one of the receptionists at his office. So, after the initial euphoria of new parenthood wore off, I tossed him out. Steven was three when his father stopped taking him for weekend visits, and four when he completely stopped phoning.

As for my own father, in spite of his "absenteeism," he did try. Certainly he tried a lot harder than Paul. He always knew where I was, knew how to get hold of me, and made sure I knew how to get hold of him. I did not really want him in my life, but complained whenever he wasn't, and was happy to see him whenever he was.

Sort of.

As it happens, my father is immortal, for reasons to which I have never really been privy. He has claimed that even _he_ doesn't know why. He's not a vampire or any kind of supernatural being - he is simply unkillable. One day a long time ago, he says he was murdered... and then woke up. And, he says, he basically stopped getting older at that point. He won't say how old he was then, but these days he looks like he's about forty, if that, and has looked that way for over a century. He will probably look that way forever. This ultimate resilience was our ultimate downfall. As a man who cannot die, he has very little sense of eternity as the rest of us know it. He has no ability to fathom real, permanent death. He could not face it, could not wrap his mind around it. I hate to say that he did not value life in the same way as the rest of us, but... well, I guess that's about the size of it.

And so, I was thirty when I became no-one, a non-person, a ghost, because my father killed my son.

It was not malicious, I have come to understand. It was not murder, it was a means to an end. It saved the planet, in fact.

But my father absolutely knew that Steven would die when he made the decision oh-so calmly. Goons with guns held me back while I reached out for him, screaming, watching it happen. I became a hollowed-out husk of a human being, the way a mother does when she has her child torn from her forever. It didn't matter that the human race could actually go on existing _because of_ my father's actions and my son's death - I did not want to go on existing. Steven had been all I'd had.

I don't need to tell you, I have not spoken to, nor will I ever speak to my father again.

I couldn't live in our home anymore. I wound up with a few meagre belongings, in a one-room flat in a smallish town in the northern reaches of Scotland, doing day labour to survive. I made a point of forming no real connections with anyone. I had run away because I couldn't stand to live in my own skin, couldn't stand to wear the mantle of Alice Carter anymore. Without Steven, there was nothing for Alice Carter to hold onto, no reason for her to be. Every day, I thought of taking my own life.

Depression wasn't something I was used to. In spite of my weird existence, I had never felt that kind of despair. And so, when it came, I handled it badly - I ran away and drank a lot of whisky because I didn't know how else to do it. But alas, it cycled through, because it was not chronic, it was grief-based. I guess I was lucky. In the end, I suppose, I was fundamentally more pissed off than sad.

And so, after three years of wanting to gouge out my own eyes, it did begin to lift. I could think straight again. Though I had never been raised with nor really exposed to religion, I realised that I truly did believe that Steven's consciousness lived on somewhere, and that he was probably horrified at the skinny, drunken, bitter bat that I had become. I realised it was a disgrace to his memory. I found that I didn't want or need to drink as much. I wanted to start eating again, I wanted to smile again. I wanted to find a place in my heart for Steven, and let him live there forever, rather than nurture the big hole he had left in my body and soul. I wanted to get the hell out of that town, and live in a place where the sun came up on a consistent basis.

I got back in touch with a friend in London, borrowed some money from him, and used it to relocate to the States. I chose a suburb of Chicago because my friend had a connection there, who knew how to get me an apartment without too much hassle. I'd had some experience with starting over, so it wasn't much for me to get myself established as Zoë Westhaven. I chose the name because I'd spent my entire adult life with an "A" name - the first letter of the alphabet. I wanted nothing to do with that, so I chose the opposite - "Z." And, the surname... I'd gone west to find a haven.

I got a job. I went to the market when I needed food. I joined a book club. I occasionally had dinner with people I worked with. I had a normal life for a while. As far as anyone knew, I was just Zoë - single woman with a funny accent, no family to speak of, rather shy. Actually, all of that was true, now. There was no discussion of my past, and if anyone tried, I evaded it expertly, as I had manoeuvred away from my background for my entire life.

After two years in Chicago, I met a man named Gregory Sands. Reasonably intelligent, diabolically charming with a smile that could melt the polar ice caps. He reminded me a lot of my father, actually. Our romance did not last long - no more than five months, but that was long enough to drum up some trouble.

In his defence, Greg decided to move to San Francisco, and broke up with me _before_ either one of us knew I was pregnant. But once I did know, I felt it was just part and parcel of the lessons of my life: fathers cannot be trusted. I chose not to get in touch with him again, and he has never known about his daughter.

And so, I was thirty-five when I became Mum again. Except, I was "Mom," because my baby would be raised in America. My co-workers threw me a baby shower, and my neighbour, Anna, actually came with me to choose a crib and drove me to the hospital when I went into labour.

I named my daughter Renee, which means "reborn." And she was a new start for me...

At least, that's how it was supposed to be.

I saw her father in her eyes when she looked at me, which didn't bother me much. What did bother me was that I also saw Steven.

It's inevitable, isn't it, that a second-time mother would compare the experience to the first? I couldn't _not_ think about how she laughed at the same baby jokes as Steven had (mostly, me sneezing and saying 'boo'), how she felt lighter in my arms than he had, how many things in the world of baby technology had advanced, just in the thirteen years since Steven had been an infant.

And when I thought of Steven, I went back to _that place,_ for a time, at least. And I thought of my father - I couldn't help it. Against my will, I remembered how my son had trusted him (trusted the man he'd known as "Uncle Jack"), and the total lack of emotion shown by my father as he drained the life out of an eight-year-old boy who carried his DNA.

As I had learned the first time, motherhood brings with it unwanted thoughts and fears. I never _wanted_ to identify with every parent on the news, but I did, because we're all of a tribe. I never wanted to even _contemplate_ my father again, but with a new, tiny life totally dependent upon me, and my life inextricably linked with Captain Jack Harkness, there was no way around it.

Parents and children are connected, literally, at the gut level, and that never, ever goes away. Not even when we want it to.

* * *

One of the things that was readily available in 2014 when Renee was born, that hadn't been in 2001 when Steven was born, was the baby video monitor. Back then, most people just had audio monitors for when the baby cried, and that was enough. But these days there is the Smartphone, and you can buy a little camera for your baby's room and download an app called "Snoozy," that will connect the camera to you, whenever it's turned on. When the baby cries, the phone _dings_ , and when you "answer" the phone, you can see and hear a live feed of your little bundle of joy.

It was a brilliant invention, and it turned me into a total maniac.

I was checking the thing ten seconds after putting her down at night, and every 2 minutes thereafter. In the middle of the night, something would wake me and I'd check my phone to make sure that it had not also disturbed Renee. Most of the time, that "something" was probably all in my head.

On one of those midnight peeks, when Renee was four weeks old, I saw a wisp of something on the monitor, hovering in the air, just outside of her crib. At first, I thought it was my eyes. I rubbed out the sleep and threw on my glasses and looked again. It started out as an "S" shape, but then began to take shape. It was a ball, then it was a face.

I screamed, and ran down the hall, heart pounding, calling my daughter's name. I burst into her room, but nothing was there. Renee was crying, but I couldn't say whether it was because she had seen what I had seen, or because I woke her when I practically kicked the door open. Like a crazy person, I searched under the crib, the closet, I opened all of the drawers, but of course I found nothing. On the monitor, when I returned to my own room, I saw nothing. After a few days, I dismissed it as a dream or an hallucination.

But as you might have guessed, it didn't stop there. I saw robots, creatures, ghosts, statues, people, things that were people-like. I spied all manner of nasty things on the monitor, and it became impossible to believe that they were just the fevered dreams of a traumatised mother. Having lived my entire life as the daughter of a man who fought (and occasionally shagged) otherworldly beings as a matter of his identity, I knew what was out there. I knew the universe was teeming with good, but also evil - the same kind of evil that had invaded the planet and had forced my father to kill Steven. It was terrifying. Each time, I raced down the hall, only to find nothing there. It was my worst nightmare coming true every few nights: my child in danger and me unable to do anything about it. Again.

But, Renee was never the worse for wear. She seemed oblivious to all of it. Her paediatrician said she was fine. She ate, she slept, she pooed. She cooed and smiled and kicked her little feet in the air, chewed on her rattles... she did baby things.

I, however, got to the point where I was only sleeping 45 minutes per night. Briefly, I began drinking whisky again, just to get some rest. But I became afraid that I'd sleep too deeply and not wake up if something actually did go wrong, so I stopped, and did what I should have done when the whole thing began: moved Renee into my bedroom with me.

I bought a special co-sleeping mat from a baby supply store, to lay in my bed beside me. It was made so as not to allow her to roll out of bed, nor me to roll over on her. For the first time in a month, I got some sleep. Renee was a lovely baby and slept through the night, so there was nothing to interrupt my slumber.

Until there was.

One night, my phone rang. It didn't just ring, it went _bing_ as though the Snoozy monitor were alerting me. I sat up with a start, and verified that Renee was still breathing. Then I looked at my phone with suspicion knowing full well that I had turned off the camera two weeks earlier, and had put it back into its original box and stowed it in the linen closet.

I crept out of bed and examined the apartment. I even looked in the linen closet, inside that box to make sure the camera was in it.

There was nothing amiss. All the while, Snoozy's notification went _bing_ every 15 seconds or so on my Smartphone.

And so, I turned off my phone, and gently set it back down upon the night stand. I stared at it for a while, as though it might come to life and murder me. My heart pounded, my breath was short... I just didn't want to know what the bloody thing had in store for me. And somehow, now that it seemingly couldn't make any more noise, it was even more threatening.

After about five minutes, I decided to lie down again. I shut my eyes, but I did not sleep.

And surely enough, my Smartphone shook to life again, going through the whole boot-up process, making all of the "hello, I'm your Smartphone" noises the manufacturer and service carrier had installed. I watched it with my eyes wide and horrified, wondering if I would reach out for it once it was finished mysteriously restarting.

And I did reach out for it, because the Snoozy _bing_ began again immediately, as soon as the startup sequence had finished.

I cursed, grabbed the phone and ran out the front door.

My apartment was on the fifth floor. Outside my door, there was a long balcony that led to more apartments in either direction. For about ten seconds I held my phone over the balcony's rail while the _bing_ sounded, ready to drop it onto the concrete walkway below.

But I had this deep, horrible feeling that if I did that, then went back to my bedroom, I'd find it lying on the night stand again intact and still _bing_ ing at me. The only way to find out what the hell was going on was to - _damn it_ \- answer it.

I stepped back inside and shut the door, took a deep breath and a gulp, reminded myself, for some reason, that there was a baseball bat in the coat closet five feet away from me, and swiped the screen.

The face of a man appeared in the video display. I gasped with a start.

"Good, good," he said. "'Bout time you answered. Hello Melissa."

The whole situation was just so appalling. The camera was disconnected, in a box in a closet, and yet the notifications sounded. The phone had been turned off, and had come back on by itself. There was now _a man_ on my baby monitor talking directly _to me_. And he knew my birth name. _No one_ knew my birth name, except my father... and this was _not_ my father.

And with this myriad of terrifying bizarreness, all I could think to say was, "M-my name is Zoë Westhaven."

He laughed. "Please. You don't believe that any more than I do. Any more than you believe your name is Alice Sangster. Or Alice Carter."

He gave me an indulgent little smile, and as it turned out, he had quite a warm one. The man was, I would guess, about sixty, with a long face. Truth be told, he looked a lot like John Frobisher, the former Permanent Secretary to the Home Office in Britain. But according to unofficial channels, Mr. Frobisher had committed a triple murder/suicide during the same intergalactic debacle that had led to Steven's death.

Except, Frobisher had always seemed frightened to me, always looked as though his head might explode at any moment. This man was calm, a right sight more in-control - and more Scottish - than Frobisher. And his hair was more unruly.

But when our eyes see things we can't make sense of, we will grasp at anything in order to make _any_ kind of sense. Basic human nature. So I couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Frobisher?"

"What? No, Melissa, I'm a friend of your father's."

"So was Frobisher."

"No, he wasn't. That man was _never_ on your father's side. Besides, he's dead. Very dead."

"I heard."

"Listen, I'm sorry if I've frightened you," he said. "Frankly, you look like you've been put through the wringer."

"Yeah, well, having my..."

"...phone come to life unbidden and notifications from a camera that's been turned off... make one a bit jumpy, does it?"

"Yes. To say the least. Is my father behind all of this?"

"No. He's nothing to do with any of it." He sounded certain, steady.

"So it was all you? Mr. Not-Frobisher?"

"Just this part. Just tonight."

"What about all that other rubbish that was appearing on the monitor?"

"You won't have to worry about it anymore. I've sorted it."

"Sorted it how?"

"It doesn't matter."

"The hell it doesn't!"

"Listen, Melissa. All you need to know is that for now, Renee is not in any danger."

"Don't call me Melissa. And how do you know my daughter's name?"

"The same way I know yours. I'm a friend of your father's, remember?"

"He's been keeping tabs on me?" I spoke timidly, afraid he would say yes, but also that he might say no.

"Come on now, you know better than that."

I sighed. I knew what he meant. The fact that he was a friend of my father's meant that he had access to information and technology that would turn me pale if I knew the full extent. He had ways of finding things out, and for me to ask questions wouldn't do any good. I had heard this same sort of song and dance from Dad, dozens of times.

"Fine," I said. "So you've sorted it. What does that mean for me and my daughter?"

"Nothing," he told me. "Except that you can go back to life the way it was before. The fact that you've turned off the monitor tells me that you've probably started sleeping in the same room with her. You don't have to do that anymore, unless you want to. She's fine. Turn the monitor back on, put the baby back in her crib, get some sleep. You won't see the phantoms on the screen ever again."

"Okay. What was all of that?"

"Best that you not know."

I tutted in exasperation. "You definitely _must_ be a friend of my father's."

"Melissa, if he's ever told you that he's withholding information to protect you, he was telling you the truth. All that rubbish he couldn't say, you were better off not knowing."

"Not condescending at all."

"Well, as you like. But it's the truth. Just go live your life, love."

"Fine, whatever. Thanks, I think." I pouted like a child. I pouted like a woman in the dark, with no reason to trust the man on what should be a dead screen.

"You're welcome," he said earnestly.

"Who are you? Can I get in touch with you?"

He sighed. "Who I am doesn't matter. And if you need to find me, contact UNIT."

"Those bastards? I don't trust them as far as I could throw them!"

"Well... that's probably good. But they know how to find me. Sort of. They know how to find other people who know how to find me. Tell them you have security clearance Blue Sky."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you know the code word that will make them hop-to, and find me."

"Is that the truth?"

"Everything I've told you has been the truth. I don't lie to people. Unless it will save their lives."

"Just omit the truth?"

"Oh, yeah, I do that plenty."

"Fantastic."

"But I don't want you to go invoking Blue Sky unless it's an emergency. If those things on the screen come back, if..."

"Yeah, yeah," I said with tedium. "Captain Jack Harkness is my father. I know what sorts of things go bump in the night."

"I'll just bet you do."


	2. Chapter 2

**I hadn't intended for Captain Jack to be a part of this story at all, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be really fun to see a scene with him and Twelve! And I always enjoy when the Doctor contemplates his former incarnations...**

* * *

MR. NOT-FROBISHER'S MISSION

Nigh on a millennium had gone by since last I'd seen Captain Jack Harkness, at least on my own timeline. Sometime just before that, I'd heard through the grapevine that the conflict with the aliens on frequency 456 had finally caused him to have a bit of a breakdown, and had driven him out to the edge of the Voyage Star World. Truth be told, I reckoned a breakdown was long overdue for him.

In the midst of my own little breakdown, I had tracked him to a pub there. I found him drowning his sorrows, and tried to see to it that he had something to do, other than drink himself into a stupour. Then I buggered off, regenerated, and all but forgot about him. Then I regenerated _again_. All that time, I never actually knew what caused him to flee so far away from his home planet, especially after a century and a half of more or less standing still, running (or running _from)_ Torchwood from inside and underground.

And then, one very strange day, I received a message on the psychic paper with coordinates and a distress call.

He wasn't in any direct danger, but when I found him in Otago, New Zealand, he was in yet another pub, pissed as a newt, and had the, er, _deportment_ of a man who had been that way for a very long time.

When I walked up and said hello, he asked me if I was who he thought I was. I flashed him the psychic paper.

"It says, _yes_ ," he slurred. "Very clever."

"So, you're looking as though you've been hit by a space bus and left in the Condensate Wilderness for a few thousand years," I said matter-of-factly.

"Ever the tactful friend."

"Planning on drinking yourself to death, are you?"

He laughed bitterly, and muttered, "Don't I fucking wish." Then he poured two shots, sliding one across the table toward me. I sat down.

He lifted his, and said, "To friends?"

I shook my head. "I'm driving."

He put it back down on the table, looking crestfallen. "Ah. Keeping someone waiting?"

"Not at the moment, no." I looked about the room, then, "What about you? What happened to Alonzo?

"Oh! You know what? Thanks for Alonzo. He was just what I needed at that time! Just the right shot in the arm. He was cute," Jack slurred. "Funny. Great in the sack. Couldn't handle me, though."

"Couldn't _handle_ you?" I asked, regretting it almost immediately.

"Yeah, way too much baggage. I mean, like, an-entire-cargo-hold-of-a-747 too much baggage for Alonzo. He was not a baggage-handler."

At this, he laughed hysterically.

"Okay, okay..." I attempted to lull, as people were staring.

"Dude!" he shouted at me suddenly. "He was just a kid! And you gave him _me_? Shame on you! He deserves someone with, like, hope. And maybe a condo and a dog or something."

"Jack, good God," I said. "Let's get you sobered up." I got up and tried to lift him to his feet by the arm, but he barely noticed. He was dead weight.

"And Doctor! Hey... come to that... what's with the new face? What happened to the old one? I liked that one!"

"What do you mean, _what happened?_ These faces come and go, you know that," I said with a sigh, slumping down once more into my chair. "You even missed one in-between."

"Seriously. The sideburns. The hair. The slightly-crooked nose. The dark, watchful eyes. Oh, and that mouth! The five-o'clock shadow. The tight suit..."

"I'm trying very hard not to feel insulted," I told him, scowling, crossing my arms. Although, in reality, since regenerating out of _that_ body, I'd been glad to be free of it. The whole package had been a liability, and I was happy not to return to the cumbersome vanity of those days.

"Did you really only swing one way back then? Female and blonde? Seems so limiting."

"Jack..."

"Now? Well now, you look like..." he squinted and tried to focus on my face. "Wow, you know what? You look like John Frobisher. Anyone ever tell you that? Not that it's unappealing, just a bit... severe."

"Jack. Why did you ask me here?"

"For a canoodle. Thought I could get you drunk and talk you into it. That was before I knew you'd changed! But now..."

"Jack!"

"No, no," he said, batting at the air, dismissing what he'd just said. "I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. That's not why."

I gave a great sigh of tedium and gifted him with my best eyebrow-tilt. This face is absolutely fantastic for an eyebrow-tilt of tedium.

"I need you to check on someone for me," he said, suddenly very serious.

"Whom?"

He didn't answer for a long while. He stared into his glass, it seemed, trying to focus on something. Then he said, "I think you'd better down that drink, Doctor. You're going to need it, for what I'm about to tell you."

"I'll take my chances," I muttered. Then I leaned forward on my forearms and spoke to him intimately. "Jack, whatever it is, you know me. If you've done something, I've done worse, I can almost guarantee it."

He chuckled. "Oh, Doctor. This is a doozy."

"I've seen doozies that would turn you inside-out. Now tell me!"

And so he did. And I took him up on that drink, but it did little to dull what he had to say.

First of all, the oversexed, overlived, overexposed, overtravelled Captain Jack Harkness was a dad. And a granddad.

And as if that weren't enough, he told me what had happened to his grandson.

And he cried while he told me.

"Jack," I whispered in exasperation. "Why didn't you just build a synthetic surrogate using Steven's cheeks cells? You could have reverberated their frequency back at them in the same way and wouldn't have had to sacrifice any child, let alone _that_ child!"

Jack's jaw dropped. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not bloody kidding!"

"Build a synthetic child out of cheek cells, Doctor?"

"Not a synthetic child," I said. "Just a surrogate. Essentially, a blob of flesh with Steven's DNA…"

"Um, wouldn't that take, like, decades?"

"No, only a few years. But with a time machine…"

"I don't have a goddamn time machine!" he shouted. "Who besides you _does_? Doctor, I didn't have _anything_ to work with! Time was running out. The planet was in chaos, millions of children were about to be taken to a different planet and _enslaved._ Buried alive. Have their souls stolen. What was I supposed to do?"

"Call me!" I shouted. People were staring again. I lowered my voice and said, "I had to find out about it after-the-fact from a delivery man in the Castelooper Galaxy. Why didn't you call me before it was too late?"

"Pfff," I spat. He took another swig of whisky, right out the bottle. "You know as well as I do that it doesn't work that way."

"It can, and you know _that_ as well as I do."

"So, what I'm just supposed to pick up the phone and call information." He put his fist to his ear and affected a high-pitch friendly tone. "Yes, the Doctor please – the TARDIS, parked somewhere in deep space. No, I'm sorry, I don't have the dialling code. Yes, operator, I'll hold."

"Don't be stupid," I chided. "Call UNIT."

"I tried that. Martha was on her honeymoon."

I laughed out loud. "Honeymoon? Are you forgetting that we're talking about two rather formidable freelance alien-hunters? Both trained by me? How long do you think that _honeymoon_ lasted before she and Mickey were on the first flight back, asking to help? You don't think she'd have dropped everything…"

My voice was rising in pitch again, and I felt myself starting to boil. It was doing no good; what was done was done, and there would be no fixing it. I mean, I could have saved Steven at the time if I'd known, and I could go back and save him now, if I wanted. But that would risk conjuring Reapers, and I was not willing to go through that rubbish again.

I took a deep breath and apologised. I patted his hand. "All right, Jack. I'm sure you did the best you could. You saved millions of children in the sacrifice of one. As you know, I've made similar calculations in my life. And if he was, as you say, the only kid in the building, I don't imagine anyone would actually fault you for that."

"Except my daughter."

"Well, she's an acceptable exception. You're a parent, you can imagine what she's feeling."

"Yeah," he whispered. Then he burst into tears again. Tight, bitter, drunken tears.

"I'll check on her," I assured him. "Do you know where she is?"

He told me where she was living, what her name was (and all of her previous names), and that he was mostly concerned about her new baby, a girl named Renee. He also told me about how he had come by this information.

"You've been sending Emissaries from the Arnitikos Dimension? Are you mad?" I asked, bearing my teeth, unable to stop myself.

"Not the Emissaries," he said. "The Foot Soldiers, the Heart Fighters, the Soul Watchers, the Mind Keepers… all of those are stand-up guys."

"But the Emissaries? Jack, it would have been just a matter of time before they heard what was going on, and they're probably sizing up the baby for a ransoming!"

"They're in a different dimension. They can't touch Alice or Renee at all."

"Or so you think. Don't you remember Rose's dimension cannon? Remember when the Daleks broke down all the walls of reality?"

"You sealed them!"

"Yeah… until someone works out how to unseal them! Jesus, Jack!" I took a pause. "You know you cocked this up don't you? That's why you called me."

"No, that's not why," he said. "I just wanted someone who cares to check on them. Actually, I also wanted someone who knows about nasty shit. Someone who knows what the hell is going on in the universe. Because frankly, most beings currently living? Fucking clueless."

"Very true," I conceded.

"So you'll do it?"

"'Course I'll do it," I said, somewhat annoyed at the question. "What do you take me for?"

"You don't even have to tell me what you find. Just make sure they're okay. And if they're not…"

"I'll sort it."

"You will? You'd do that for me?"

"I would."

"And if she asks if I sent you…"

"I'll lie."

He nodded and seemed relieved. He leaned on the table with his arms in a rectangular arrangement and stared at the wooden table, just breathing for a few moments.

After this pause, he asked, "You'll call off the Emissaries, if they're a threat?"

"Yeah," I sighed.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," I said with a scowl. Then, "Jack, do me a favour. Do us all a favour. Retreat. Just give Melissa and Renee a chance to live without you. Let me worry about them, okay?"

"Yeah. But I should probably mention..."

"What?"

"If you call her Melissa, she'll take your head off."

* * *

Jack had given me Melissa's Smartphone number, which he had come by via "unofficial channels," and that's all he would tell me. Though she was the daughter of my dear friend (or perhaps _because_ she was his daughter, and potentially had his head for technology and mischief), I did not want her to have a frequency for the TARDIS stored in her phone. It was likely she would never realise the gravity of what she had, but I did not want to take any chances with a Harkness offspring. I opted to use _other,_ stranger means of getting in touch with her, rather than simply calling her from the console.

I tethered the TARDIS to the satellite associated with her mobile phone service carrier. Then I put on my favourite orange spacesuit and hopped on-board for a few minutes to crawl around on the small unit, using my sonic screwdriver to tap into her phone. I was planning either to ring her up or send her an SMS (I hadn't decided yet). To my surprise, when I crossed back into the TARDIS, the visual display upon the screen on my console gave me a view of her Smartphone's desktop. I smirked at this turn of events; I didn't really think that this fact actually gave me any sort of advantage in getting hold of "Zoë Westhaven," née Melissa Moretti, and erstwhile Alice Sangster/Carter, it was just a handy piece of information to have, should I decide to stalk someone on Earth who really deserved it.

The phone was registered in someone else's name, and I reckoned Melissa was simply trying to keep herself, or at least Zoë Westhaven, off the grid.

She had a number of common apps on her main desktop: e-mail, an Outlook calendar, alarm clock, calculator, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, a barcode display thingie that allows one to get in and out of Starbucks in less than ten seconds. She had auto-pay on her mobile and television service (which I also assumed were registered in a different name, though I didn't look). Though, there was no evidence that she participated in social media. For a woman in her thirties living in America in 2014, this was unusual, but for a woman who was trying her best to start a new life and not draw attention to herself, it was eminently intelligent.

Now, I know what you're thinking – I see that judgemental look on your face. I didn't look through her stuff – there was no real reason, and that would have been an abuse of my unique and interesting prowess, would it not? I merely took what amounted to an _accidental_ glance at her telephone desktop.

Until, that is, I saw something called "Snoozy," an app whose icon featured the face of a cartoon baby, with its eyes closed and "zzz" apparently coming out of its head. I wondered why the hell she would keep herself off the grid, but perhaps put her daughter on it. Mostly, curiosity just got the best of me, and I wondered what the app did, as I had never seen nor heard of it. So I took a look. And in the end, I was glad I did.

Turns out, Snoozy is an app that connects the phone to a small camera, and allows a mum to eye her baby in another room. It was a brilliant idea for new parents in that particular age of paranoia.

And when I opened up the channel, I saw something that made me curse out loud, and call my friend Jack several colourful names. Not that it was his fault, but…

Well, no, it kind of was.

The universe is a strange place, full of coincidences. Also full of intangible energy, information, waves, frequencies, oscillations. For all of this rubbish, there's scarcely a pocket of "emptiness" anywhere in deep space. And humans are actually privy to a lot of that. Ever since Marconi and the radio, transmissions, receivers, signals and wavelengths had been something that human beings could grasp, and that lot, they've only expanded on it. Which has been _mostly_ a good thing.

But once in a while, one of those _frequencies_ coincided with another, and made things complicated. As it turned out, the folks who invented Snoozy had put their cameras on the same frequency as the Arnitikos dimension. This meant that the Heart Fighters, Soul Watchers and the like, whom Jack had engaged to check in on his daughter and granddaughter, could use the signal between the camera, the satellite and the phone, to travel and/or see into our dimension. I must say, I had mixed feelings about stumbling across this, as my next agenda item had been to find out how the hell the Arnitikos lot had been able to observe Melissa and Renee at all, from where they were. Mixed feelings, because I'd worked it out, but it likely meant that the whole thing had been scaring the ever-loving pants off of Melissa. She had probably been able to see them on the camera if she ever looked at the display when they were there, and I thought it very doubtful that she had never seen them.

What she perhaps didn't know was that the Arnitikos types were probably hovering round her, as well – she just couldn't see them because she wasn't looking at her own room using the camera. I shuddered a bit. Just a bit.

I did a bit more digging into Melissa's particular app. Smartly, the Snoozy software engineers had equipped the app with no memory, so that if the phone got lost, no-one could see "archives" of the baby sleeping.

But I'm not just some hapless bloke who hacked a phone. I was able to see that she had turned off the camera two weeks earlier and had not used it again. Why would a mother do that?

Well, why indeed. If I were her, I'd have done the same thing. But then what? How to make sure one's baby daughter is safe, when there are ghosts on the comm, and no monitoring? Why, sleep alongside her, of course.

Which did not sound like a completely unpleasant option, but if it was the _only_ option left to her, that just didn't seem right. Melissa (or any parent) ought to be able to sleep in her own space, and so should the baby. In fact, I felt, as a one-time parent myself, that it was an important skill for a baby to learn. I didn't go in for that co-sleeping rubbish.

So I made an adjustment. It took me twenty seconds to set Melissa's Snoozy app's signal on a different frequency that would not only be inaccessible to hackers, but also to any non-human entities. I'm pretty brilliant with stuff like that.

The creepy part was that the Arnitikos types were probably still visiting on a nightly basis, she just couldn't see them. And so, she had the sense that everything was all right. Because, you see, the Arnitikos beings were intelligent; they were more than capable of finding other ways of seeing into our dimension once they had already done it, and possibly now they could push their way through properly _._ It just took that one little boost from the Snoozy app to give them their "in," and then they could find their way from there. Like a maze once run.

Jack was mostly right; creatures of the Arnitikos dimension, with a few exceptions, were mostly harmless, and were probably checking in on Melissa and Renee simply because Jack had asked them to. But how would _you_ like it if, even harmless, entities were watching you sleep at night, and you just couldn't see them?

Well, actually getting rid of them would be another matter. For now, I just wanted Melissa to know that she could go back to her normal Zoë Westhaven life, alien-free. At least until the next thing cropped up…

I also wanted her to know that her father was still looking after her, even though I planned on telling her he wasn't. I assumed she wasn't a moron, and that she wouldn't believe me anyway. More importantly, I wanted her to know that I was looking after as I still didn't want her having the dialling frequency for the TARDIS stored in her phone, I decided to use Snoozy.

And I knew it would scare her, but… well, I use my powers for good. She would see that, wouldn't she?


	3. Chapter 3

**This is the third and final chapter! It's a weird story, I know, but very therapeutic to write. And I found that I really enjoy writing for the Twelfth Doctor!**

 **On that note, I realize that Twelve talking about destroying Gallifrey is problematic. His angst over Gallifrey is completely different from that of Nine, Ten and Eleven, and involves totally different questions. The 50th anniversary saw to that, as did the series 9 finale.**

 **However, it must be assumed that Twelve remembers how Nine, Ten and Eleven felt on the matter, and how awful it was to wonder whether he made the right choice, and to feel alone in the universe. Maybe, just for Alice/Zoe's sake, he's tapping into his past feelings.**

 **If you've been reading, thank you! And kindly leave a review! It would be nice to know that my efforts did not go unnoticed. :-) Enjoy!**

* * *

LIVING

In the autumn of 2015, a dark-haired woman in her thirties entered her favorite sandwich shop. The "sandwich artist," Marco, made note of her each week (even though she was at least fifteen years his senior) because her eyes were so remarkably blue, and yet, she had a decidedly olive-skinned, Mediterranean look about her. In fact, she reminded him of old pictures he'd seen of his Nonni, his one non-black grandparent. Far from originating in this rough Chicago borough, Nonni was born and raised in Florence.

In addition to being beautiful and blue, her eyes were also watchful, melancholy, and intelligent. He had never really had the courage to talk to her any more than was necessary to make her "usual," every Friday when she came in on her lunch hour. But he played a little game with himself about what sorts of things he might learn, should he ever work up the gumption to ask her about her life.

He wagered that she had at least one Italian or Greek parent. He also thought there must be someone in her life she felt she could not trust (probably also a parent). The paranoid gait of _guard up_ was apparent to him, in the way she carried herself, and most of the time, he found, this affectation came from childhood.

And then there was that accent. The thought of it made him smile as she entered, and he anticipated hearing her lilting, British _hello,_ and any words that might follow.

She ordered her usual roast beef and cheddar with a small salad and ginger ale, then sat down in the corner to break for lunch, and read her book. She always ate half the sandwich, and then wrapped up the other half, and stashed it in her purse.

His co-workers knew he had a crush on her, and they liked to give him a hard time about it. While standing in the supply room behind a curtain, enduring the umpteenth innuendo from Lamar and Olivia, attempting to deflect it, Marco heard a male voice call out, "Hello? Does anyone work here, or is it self-serve?"

He realized the sandwich counter had been left unmanned, and he hopped out from behind the curtain. A tall, thin man in his fifties, wearing an expensive-looking black blazer over a black hoodie and black tee-shirt, stood on the other side of the sneeze-guard, scowling.

"Hi, sorry about that," said Marco, pulling on a new pair of plastic gloves. "What can I get for you?"

"Cup of tea and a lemon biscuit," said the man, in an accent that could have been British.

"Um, we only have iced tea, is that okay?"

"Iced tea," the man said flatly. Then he threw up his arms. "What is it with Americans? Why does everything have to be _huge,_ and have _ice_ in it? Iced tea, iced water, iced coffee, ice fishing, ice hockey. Even Alaska. Have you been to Alaska? And, here's a question for the ages: what the bloody hell is a Frappuccino?"

Marco had no idea what to say.

The man sighed. "Fine. Iced tea and a lemon biscuit."

"I don't think we have biscuits."

"A _cookie_ then," said the man, mockingly. "You _do_ know what cookies are."

"Yes," said Marco. "But we only have chocolate chip or Snickerdoodle."

"What in the name of Rassilon is Snickerdoodle?"

Marco gulped. "It's a kind of… white… cookie. Butter, sugar. I think some cinnamon." At that point, he didn't know why, but he glanced at his crush in the corner to see if she was watching him be admonished.

But alas, she was immersed in her book.

"Then why can't you just say _we have butter cookies with cinnamon_?"

"Um…"

"Never mind. Iced tea and a snickerdoodle."

"Okay," Marco said, relieved. He punched up the order. "That will be four-seventy-five."

The grumpy man paid with a credit card with a chip in it, that, for some reason, was in a little black wallet thing, all by itself.

While Marco was dispensing room-temperature tea into a cup with ice, the man said, "Look, I'm very sorry."

"It's all good."

"No, I'm truly, truly sorry. I'm just a bit out-of-sorts because… well, reasons. But they're good reasons. Not good enough to be cranky to someone who's just trying to help, but… well, good-ish."

Marco turned around and put the iced tea on the counter. "Hey, thanks for saying it, but… it's really fine. You're not even close to the crankiest person I've waited on today."

"Really?" the man asked, genuinely surprised. "Jesus, what kind of riffraff do you get in this place?"

"Now, now," Marco chided with a good-natured smirk on his face. "This is my home. These are my peeps."

The man looked around. "They don't look like your peeps," he said. Then he leaned in. "Truth be told, you seem like a cut above, my friend."

"Thank you," said Marco, shyly, not sure whether he should accept the compliment or not.

"What else do you do? I'm sensing this is just your day job."

"I'm in school. In college, I mean. In fact, I have class in less than an hour… I hope Tamara shows up in time to take over my shift."

"Less than an hour. You mean, you go to school down the street?" asked the man, gesturing out the window. "The University of Chicago?"

"Yeah."

"Well," he said, duly impressed. "Congratulations, my young friend. What are you studying?"

"Social work," Marco answered. "Minoring in psychology."

"An excellent choice," said the customer, with an air of pride. "What made you decide to do that?"

"I grew up in the 'hood," said Marco. " _This_ 'hood, in fact. I was lucky, I had a good mom, attentive and all that. But so many of the kids I knew… they had no one. No direction, no goals, no hope. Their parents were drug-addicted, or mixed up in gangs. Me, I was pushed. In a good way. I was pushed to get good grades, do community service, be active with my church and whatnot, so I could get a scholarship."

"Lucky, maybe. More to do with hardworking and clever."

"Well, whatever," Marco dismissed with a wave of his hand and a grin. "Point is, I knew I could get out of here someday if I wanted, but then what? Then I'd be part of the problem, right? All the people with resources leaving the neighborhood behind…"

"Absolutely."

"So, I'm gonna be a social worker. I figure I can help."

"Very admirable, sir. May I shake your hand?"

Marco smiled sheepishly and extended his hand over the counter and shook with the cranky-turned-admiring customer.

"You know," the customer chirped with a big smile. "Sometimes humans are just brilliant!"

And then a familiar voice sounded in the vicinity. "If we humans are brilliant, then what exactly does that make you?" it asked.

The customer spun around and came face to face with Marco's favorite regular, the dark-haired, blue-eyed, melancholy lady, whom he had last seen sitting at a table in the corner.

"Hello," the tall, grey-haired customer said to her flatly.

* * *

The tall customer brought his iced tea and snickerdoodle to the table, and sat down across from the woman most recently known as Zoë Westhaven. She pushed her sandwich aside, and leaned on her forearms. "So. Do you want to start?"

"Melissa," he said softly. "What are you doing _here?_ In this neighbourhood?"

"When I asked you if you wanted to start, I meant, _start telling me what's going on,_ not, _start asking me questions._ And my name is Zoë," she told him firmly. "Have not answered to Melissa in a very long time."

"Apologies. Zoë."

They stared at each other for a few moments, steely eyes meeting steely eyes. At last, Zoë decided to explain. "A friend of mine is the pastor at the church at the end of the block."

"The one that looks like it could collapse at any moment?"

"That's the one. Four months ago, it was on the verge of closing after a hundred years – they had a major cash-flow issue. Fortunately, they discovered that some of their problems stemmed from bad bookkeeping, and not entirely from lack of funds, so I agreed to work one day a week as their bookkeeper. I've been cleaning up the mess the last person made, and helping keep them afloat. At least for a little while longer."

"Good for you," he said. "Boy, this neighbourhood is full of philanthropists."

She sighed, looked out the window at the neighborhood, the people passing by. "I wish that were actually true. It's a funny old quarter, isn't it?" she said. "Two blocks from the University of Chicago, and yet there's this dilapidated old church that's going to sink because no-one in the congregation can afford to put anything into the collection plate. And did you know, according to the Cook County Clerk and Recorder, if you live in this neighborhood, in the space of a year, you have a one-in-fifteen chance of becoming the victim of a violent crime?"

"I didn't know that, no."

"Well," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Learn something new every day, don't you, Doctor?"

He smiled softly. "So you know me, then."

"I know _of_ you. It occurred to me in the weeks following the… baby monitor incident, that that's who you were. What _friend of my father's_ could have done what you did?"

"Right," he said, shifting in his chair. "Your dad told you about me."

"Many, many times," she said. "My dad wasn't exactly Ward Cleaver, but two messages came through loud and clear: never blow your cover, and you can trust the Doctor."

 _Trust the Doctor._ He gulped, thinking of Steven, of the loss she endured. "So, I suppose you'd like to know where the hell I was when the Earth was being attacked by the 456."

She shook her head. "It's none of my business. It's like dad said, you can't police all of the universe all of the time. Besides, I sort of thought you _were_ about somewhere, that maybe things would have been a lot worse if you hadn't been."

"Oh, things were plenty bad," he conceded. "But no, I wasn't here. I didn't even know about it until much later… heard about it from a faraway source while I was having a good long mope. Wish I could've been here. I'm sorry I was so wrapped up in my own issues."

She shrugged. "Our problems are what they are," she said. "It does no good to lay blame anymore."

"And yet… you are still blaming your father."

"Yeah, well…"

"And hiding from him."

Zoë sighed. "I'm not hiding from him, exactly. I can never really hide from him. He always knows how to find me."

"Then what are you hiding from, _Melissa_?"

"Melissa is dead. Alice is hiding. From grief. From loss. From the memory of Steven's face when he died."

"And how has that been working out for you? Have you been able to get away from them?"

"No," she admitted. "Having Renee has helped a bit, though."

"I bet it has," he said. Then, on a different note, he said, "Listen Zoë, I know how you feel."

"No, you don't," she lamented. "You couldn't know what this is like."

His eyes narrowed. "Is that so? Look, you lost your son. I lost mine too. More than one, in fact. And daughters - plural. And grandchildren. And you think you're unique because someone close to you was also his killer? Well, I can top it."

"You can?" she asked, not sure she really wanted to know any more.

The Doctor nodded, and growled, "Oh yes. You only _think_ your father's hard to hide from! The man who killed my family is someone from whom it is literally impossible for me to ever escape. I can't even take a bloody break from him, or be out of his sight for five minutes. I can't punish him, have any sort of closure nor revenge. It's all I can do to look him in the eye each morning while I'm brushing my teeth, okay? So, trust me when I say, I have it worse than you."

She stared back at him, trying not to show surprise nor fear. She did not succeed.

"So listen, I know the grief of a parent, all right?" he said. "And the guilt of not being able to protect them. And since I can never run from myself, I know that the only recourse is forgiveness. You say you can't really run nor hide from your father…"

"I can see where you're going with this," Zoë said, beginning to fold up her uneaten half-sandwich and her book. "And I'm not interested." She stood.

"No, no, no," said the Doctor in a fatherly way, taking her book out of her hand, and setting it back down on the table. "You're not going anywhere. Sit down."

For some reason, she obeyed him. _Trust the Doctor._

He continued, "I saw your father recently… just before the _baby monitor incident,_ as you call it. He told me everything. I'll be honest – before then, I had no idea you or Steven or Renee existed."

"He never talked about us?"

"No," the Doctor confessed. "I reckon he wants to keep you safe. In fact, I know he does. You must have worked out by now, the only reason I got in touch with you was because he asked me to. He asked me to check on you."

"I figured."

There was a pause. "Have you begun using the Snoozy app again?"

"Yes," she said. "It took me a few nights after I talked to you to get up the courage to separate myself from her, but yes. Renee is back to sleeping in her own bed."

The Doctor smiled. "How old is she now?"

"Fourteen months. She's walking, and talking a little."

"Wonderful. Have you seen any more _beings_ on the camera?"

"No, I haven't. Thank you for that."

"You're welcome. It may or may not surprise you to know that those beings, they were also sent by your father to check up on you."

"What? So you lied to me."

"Yes," he confessed soberly. "Those beings, they exist in another dimension and they used your camera's frequency to find their way in, so they could see. They're harmless, but I reckoned they were frightening you."

"Yeah, they were! Damn it, Dad!" she hissed.

"He just wanted to help. He didn't know about the app, and he certainly would have had no idea that they'd use the same frequency."

"So I suspect that you're now going to tell me that they're not gone, that you simply changed the camera's signal so I couldn't see them anymore."

The Doctor raised his formidable eyebrows. "Actually, yes. At first. But after I talked to you, I set about calling them off, and finally succeeded, after months and months. It took some doing to prove to them that I have the right to speak for Captain Jack Harkness, in his… _incapacitated state."_

"What do you mean _incapacitated?"_

"I mean perpetually drunk as a skunk and basically irrational."

"Ah."

"I mean _grieving._ "

"Yeah."

"So, I'm happy to report, the ghosts in your bedroom, and in Renee's, are gone. Not just invisible, but gone."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"You're welcome," he said with some finality. After a few beats, he said, "You may not believe this, Zoë, but your dad wants to keep safe not just you, but everyone. He is, ultimately, an eminently good-hearted man. He just doesn't always have the means. None of us _always_ has the means to keep _everyone_ in the clear, and so we have to make choices. Trust me. I know about this stuff."

She said nothing.

"I wasn't on the planet at the time, but I've looked into it. The debacle with the 456 was what, six years ago? Summer of 2009? The 456 was demanding ten per cent of Earth's children, or they would effectively have incinerated the planet. Which meant that each country had a _terrible_ choice to make. The worst choice. Which children had to go?" At this point, the Doctor's voice became almost a hiss; not loud, but angry and intense. "Do you know what the British government was up to? They reckoned that there was a _certain element_ amongst the general population whose children would not wind up amounting to anything anyhow. They reckoned that these children wouldn't wind up becoming engineers and scientists… you know the kind of people the world can _use_. Because, who needs people to do the plumbing, eh? Or cut the grass? Those people are disposable!

"So, they sent soldiers into low-income areas to rip the children from the arms of their parents, load them into buses, and serve them up for the aliens to consume as they will. Not to kill them, mind you, but to consume. Consume their life-force. Council estates all over England, Scotland and Wales, the scene was the same: children being dragged, kicking and screaming bloody murder. Armoured soldiers fending off parents with the butts of their guns, and basically _the worst_ of humanity showing itself in all of its awful glory. I know you don't have to imagine what that was like for those parents, Zoë."

She shook her head, and a tear fell down her cheek. She had known of the government's plans, but had not been in the trenches when it happened. She had never bothered to imagine the scene; she had been too busy trying and failing to protect her own child.

"And guess what? Human nature being what it is, the British government wasn't the only government who had this brilliant idea. France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Russia, Japan… even those nice people in Canada. And yes, these United States."

Instinctively, Zoë looked around her, seeing where he was going with this.

"This neighbourhood, six years ago, was targeted, you can bet on it. Children who attended that church you're trying to save, they were very nearly shipped off to become slaves of the 456. They were dragged out into the street and loaded onto a bus while their parents cried."

"Okay, I get it," she sniffled, more tears running down her face.

The Doctor pointed to a Hispanic teenaged girl sitting by the window sipping a Coke and staring at her phone. "Six years ago, that young woman, she would have been, what? Eight, nine, maybe ten years old? She wouldn't be here if it weren't for your dad. And for Steven."

Zoë nodded and cried.

Outside the window, a large woman passed by, dragging three kids with her. One of them looked to be about twelve, one was perhaps eight, and a baby was in her arms. "That mother would have lost two of those kids, and likely wouldn't have had another. She would have been too frightened. Too crushed."

With that, Marco the sandwich artist literally hopped over the counter with his backpack and headed for the door. The Doctor turned and looked at him.

"Did your replacement turn up?" asked the Time Lord.

"No," Marco replied. "But I got to go! See you later, I hope!"

The Doctor smiled and waved, and he and Zoë watched Marco cross the street and run out of sight toward the university.

"Do you know what he's going to do?" asked the Doctor.

"No," she croaked, reaching for a napkin to soak up her tears.

"He's going to class now. He's studying at the University of Chicago to be a social worker, and he wants to come back and work in this neighbourhood. He wants to help, to give something back, to give a push to kids who didn't have the same opportunity as he had. He's about eighteen or twenty now, wouldn't you say? Six years ago he was twelve or fourteen. And because Captain Jack Harkness made a difficult decision, made a horrible sacrifice, Marco is here, and in a position to help. So many of these people are here, or can still hug their kids, on account of what your father did."

She sobbed. She hid her eyes, and her shoulders shook.

The Doctor continued. "I know that without Steven's involvement, Jack would have found another child, but the fact is, you were in that facility _because_ you are his daughter, and Steven was his grandson. And I know you didn't ask to be born as the offspring of an immortal alien-fighting rogue with a heart of gold, but the fact is, you were. We all play the cards we are dealt, Zoë. The best we can hope for when we lose a hand… well, it's that the winner was someone who deserved to win. In this case, the winner was all the children of Earth, and their parents."

"I get it. I came to terms with that long ago." Through the long sobs, and through her trying to stifle them, she was barely understandable.

"Did you?" he asked. "Because this pain I see on you, it seems very raw to me." He handed her another napkin, and she took it.

"I know that what he did saved the Earth. I've always known that."

"You've know it abstractly. Intellectually. But I'm guessing you've never thought about it on the human level. Look into the eyes of the people he saved, Zoë. You spend time in this neighbourhood… look at it anew. Really look at the teenagers and young adults around here, and think of where they would be if your father had done nothing. Even if they're just wasting time standing around on the corner, they're here to make the choice."

Zoë nodded, and took another minute to cry. Then, she seemed to finish. She looked at the Doctor as though she had never seen him before, and then asked, "What about you, Doctor? You implied some heavy sacrifices yourself."

"I never talk about that with anyone."

"I never talk about my father and Steven with anyone either, and yet here we are. Let's make it a day of firsts."

He took in a big breath and then let it out, looking anywhere but at her. "I made a calculation a long time ago," he said. "I destroyed my own planet so that the rest of the universe could be spared the horror of the war I was fighting. The battle was reaching critical mass, was getting ready to spill out into the cosmos, and I knew that neither race would back down. So I did what I felt I had to do."

"Wow."

"I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that," he said. "There are other factors… the planet might in fact be caught in a time-pocket someplace, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, I sacrificed my own flesh and blood, just like your father. Except I did it from far away. I didn't have to look my grandchildren in the eyes while I ended their lives, or listen to my children scream. Jack had to. Had to push through, even though he said Steven looked at him imploringly the entire time."

Zoë chuckled bitterly. "What the hell are you saying? Is that supposed to make me feel better? The fact that my father can look into the face of a trusting little boy, and kill him?"

"Well, you can see it as more noble, if you like, or more savage. But either way, you should think of it as something other than just cold-blooded murder."

"I never thought of it as cold-blooded murder."

"Then why are you still running from your dad?"

"I can't look him the eye, Doctor. I just can't."

He took another deep breath, and let it out again. "There's a part of you, a big part of you, that understands Steven's death on a highly rational level, and is even grateful that someone made the call. The world around you goes on turning, and that's a wonderful thing. But it's easier to reject that part of yourself, because if you hate your father, then you don't have to face him."

"I'm not going to face him."

He ignored her. "There is grey area here, Zoë, isn't there? A huge amount of it, and that terrifies you."

"Of course it does!" she shouted. She hadn't meant to, she just had. People stared for a moment, then went back to their sandwiches.

"Look, I understand why you don't want to see your father. I certainly would never try to force you, and neither would he, frankly. But for your own sake, love, I suggest that you begin to embrace the _forgiveness_ side of things so that you can start to move on."

"I have moved on. I have Renee, and my dad can't touch her."

"So you can love Renee for herself, and help her to grow up and have her own life. So you can stop thinking of her as a symbol of _your_ new life, of Life After Jack. So you can just see her for the beautiful child that she is, and not as an extension of Steven, or something that exists in spite of your dad. Doesn't Renee deserve that from you?"

He allowed her a few moments to mull over his words. She stared at the wall to her left and truly did try to let what he said sink in.

"Okay," she said. "I will not reject the… _forgiveness side of things."_

"That's all can ask at this stage, I reckon," he said with a smile. He stood up to leave. "You know how to find me, yeah?"

"UNIT. Blue sky."

"Exactly."

She nodded. He noticed the conflicted melancholy on her face.

He bent and touched her hand. "Zoë, you know as well as I do that bonds between parents and children can never really be broken. But to shun your father forever would imply that they can, which would imply…

"…that it's possible that I could be separated forever from Steven."

"Right. You don't want to believe that, do you?"

"No," she said. And for the first time, the Doctor saw her smile. "Definitely not."

THE END

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